CHAPTER VIII.

INTERFERENCE OF GOVERNMENT WITH THE DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF THE STATES.

PARTY PLATFORMS CANNOT ALTER THE CONSTITUTION.

POLITICAL parties, in times of peace, have often declared that they do not intend to interfere with slavery in the States. President Buchanan denied that government had any power to coerce the seceded States into submission to the laws of the country. When President Lincoln called into service the army and navy, he announced that it was not his purpose to interfere with the rights of loyal citizens, nor with their domestic affairs. Those who have involved this country in bloody war, all sympathizers in their treason, and others who oppose the present administration, unite in denying the right of the President or of Congress to interfere with slavery, even if such interference is the only means by which the Union can be saved from destruction. No constitutional power can be obliterated by any denial or abandonment thereof, by individuals, by political parties, or by Congress.

The war power of the President to emancipate enemy's slaves has been the subject of a preceding chapter. Congress has power to pass laws necessary and proper to provide for the defence of the country in time of war, by appropriating private property to public use, with just compensation therefor, as shown in Chapter I.; also laws enforcing emancipation, confiscation, and all other belligerent rights, as shown in Chapter II.; and it is the sole judge as to what legislation, to effect these objects, the public welfare and defence require;

it may enact laws abolishing slavery, whenever slavery, ceasing to be merely a private and domestic relation, becomes a matter of national concern, and the public welfare and defence cannot be provided for and secured without interfering with slaves. Laws passed for that purpose, in good faith, against belligerent subjects, not being within any express prohibition of the constitution, cannot lawfully be declared void by any department of government. Reasons and authority for these propositions have been stated in previous chapters.

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS.

Among the errors relating to slavery which have found their way into the public mind, errors traceable directly to a class of politicians who are now in open

rebellion, the most important is, that Congress has no right to interfere in any way with slavery. Their assumption is, that the States in which slaves are held are alone competent to pass any law relating to an institution which belongs exclusively to the domestic affairs of the States, and in which Congress has no right to interfere in any way whatever.

From a preceding chapter, (see page 17,) it will be seen, that if slaves are property, property can be interfered with under the constitution; if slavery is a domestic institution, as Mormonism or apprenticeship is, each of them can lawfully be interfered with and annulled. But slavery has a double aspect. So long as it remains in truth "domestic," that is to say, according to Webster's Dictionary, "pertaining to house or home," so long government cannot be affected by it, and have no ground for interfering with it; when, on the contrary, it no longer pertains only to house and home, but enters into vital questions

of war, aid and comfort to public enemies, or any of the national interests involved in a gigantic rebellion; when slavery, rising above its comparative insignificance as a household affair, becomes a vast, an overwhelming power which is used by traitors to overthrow the government, and may be used by government to overthrow traitors, it then ceases to be merely domestic ; it becomes a belligerent power, acting against the "public welfare and common defence." No institution continues to be simply " domestic" after it has become the effective means of aiding and supporting a public

enemy.

When an "institution" compels three millions of subjects to become belligerent traitors, because they are slaves of disloyal masters, slavery becomes an affair which is of the utmost public and national concern. But the constitution not only empowers, but, under certain contingencies, requires slavery in the States to be interfered with. No one who will refer to the sections of that instrument here cited, will probably venture to deny the power of Congress, in one mode or another, to interfere for or against the institution of slavery.

CONGRESS MAY PASS LAWS INTERFERING FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION OF SLAVERY IN THE STATES.

Art. IV. Sect. 2, required that fugitive slaves should be delivered up, and the fugitive slave laws were passed to carry this clause into effect.

Art. I. Sect. 9, required that the foreign slave trade should not be interfered with prior to 1808, but allowed an importation tax to be levied on each slave, not exceeding ten dollars per head.

Art. V. provided that no amendment of the constitu

tion should be made, prior to 1808, affecting the preceding clause.

Art. I. Sect. 2 provides that three fifths of all slaves shall be included in representative numbers.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE AGAINST SLAVERY IN THE STATES.

Art. I. Sect. 8. Congress has power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes. Under this clause. Congress can in effect prohibit the inter-state slave trade, and so pass laws diminishing or destroying the value of slaves in the border States, and practically abolish slavery in those States.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE WITH SLAVERY BY CALLING UPON THE SLAVES, AS SUBJECTS, TO ENTER MILITARY SERVICE.

Art. I. Sect. 8. Congress has the power to declare war and make rules for the government of land and naval forces, and under this power to decide who shall constitute the militia of the United States, and to enrol and compel into the service of the United States all the slaves, as well as their masters, and thus to interfere with slavery in the States.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE WITH SLAVERY IN THE STATES BY CUTTING OFF THE SUPPLY OF SLAVES TO SUCH STATES.

The law now prohibiting the importation of slaves, and making slave trading piracy, is an interference with slavery, by preventing their introduction into the slave States. So also is the treaty with England to suppress the slave trade, and to keep an armed naval force on the coast of Africa.

In case of servile insurrection against the laws and

authority of the United States, the government are bound to interfere with slavery, as much as in an insurrection of their masters, which may also require a similar interference. The President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, has the power to make treaties; and, under the treaty-making power, slavery can be and has been interfered with. In the last war with Great Britain, a treaty was made to evacuate all the forts and places in the United States without carrying away any of the slaves who had gone over to them in the States. Congress then interfered to sustain the institution of slavery, for it was only by sustaining slavery that this government could claim indemnity for slaves as property. The treaty-making power may abolish slavery in the whole country, as, by Art. VI., the constitution, the laws, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land. A clause in any treaty abolishing slavery would, ipso facto, become the supreme law of the land, and there is no power whatever that could interfere with or prevent its operation. By the treaty-making power, any part of the country burdened with slavery, and wrested from us by conquest, could be ceded to a foreign nation who do not tolerate slavery, and without claim of indemnity. The principle is well established that "the release of a territory from the dominion and sovereignty of the country, if that cession be the result of coercion or conquest, does not impose any obligation upon the government to indemnify those who may suffer loss of property by the cession."*

1 Kent Com. 178.